He invented the on-demand breathing technique for SCUBA diving: Who is Jacques Cousteau?

Jacques Costeau was born on 11 June 1910 in Saint André-de-Cubzac, near Bordeaux, France. His father (Daniel Costeau) is an international lawyer and his mother (Elizabeth Durathon) is the daughter of a local wealthy vintner and landowner. Jacques Costeau learned to swim when he was just four years old. He moved to New York with his family when he was ten years old. Here he learned to speak English fluently, snorkeling and diving, and improved himself in swimming.

While at summer camp in Vermont, Jacques Cousteau, who was involved in cleaning the lake near the camp, swam there without goggles, and this started his lifelong love of swimming.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful Aqua-Lung, open-circuit SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). The apparatus assisted him in producing some of the first underwater documentaries.

When his family returned to France, they moved to Marseille, a city where Jacques could snorkel and swim. Here Jacques bought himself a detachable camera that he could learn how to operate mechanically.

Concerned about their son's academic progress, the Costeaus sent him to a boarding school in Alsace, France, and it worked wonders for a disciplined boy.

The Beginning of a Life at Sea

In 1930, a young 20-year-old Jacques passed the grueling examinations of the Naval Academy in Brest, just before spending a year at sea, and in 1933 he was first commissioned as a lieutenant. He spent the next two years sailing the oceans.

A Difficult Period in His Life: Paralysis

Jacques Cousteau, who started training to become a naval pilot in 1935, had fractures in his arms and paralysis on his right side as a result of a fatal accident in 1936. This accident ended his piloting career before it even started.

Surgeons thought it best to amputate the infected right arm, but Jacques Cousteau insisted that his arm not be amputated. After months of treatment and swimming, his arm fractures healed and he became a Marine Artillery Instructor.

Jacques Cousteau, who swims every day to strengthen his arms, designed swimming goggles inspired by airplane pilot goggles and explored the bottom of the sea with them. The beauty, fauna, and flora of the sea floor must have impressed him so much that diving became his life's work.

Despair

At the beginning of World War II, Jacques Cousteau was serving as an Artillery Officer when French ships bombarded the Italian base in Genoa, which borders France and Italy.

After surrendering to Germany in 1940, the southern part of France was ruled by the Vichy Regime in collaboration with the Nazis, causing Jacques Cousteau to be driven to more despair.

Espionage

Jacques Cousteau, who was recruited into the French intelligence service just before the war, was in France during the war and worked in operations against Italian intelligence. At the end of the war, he was awarded the Order of the Military Cross of France.

Naval Cameraman and Film Award

Jacques Cousteau began the work that would bring him world fame by placing a camera under the sea around the Mediterranean Embiez Islands with his friend Marcel Ichac in 1942. They shot an underwater movie called “18 Meters Depth” and were awarded the following year for their work.

Invention of the Dive Regulator

The Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) was invented by the Frenchman Yves Paul Gaston Le Prieur. Jacques Cousteau was fed up with the breathing equipment available to divers in 1926 because the airflow from the air tanks could not be adequately regulated with this device, resulting in a brief stay underwater. It was previously thought that pure oxygen instead of air would allow a longer stay underwater, but at depths below 45 feet, the toxic effect of oxygen caused unconsciousness in the individual, and this idea was immediately abandoned.

Jacques Cousteau then worked on finding a different way to control the diver's airflow. In 1942, the Demand Regulator was invented by Frenchman Emile Gagnan in order to control the gas flow in the engines. This Demand Regulator only allowed gas flow “on demand”, not always.

Jacques Cousteau saw the potential of such a valve for divers and thought they could stay underwater longer simply by breathing in air. Cousteau, who suggested to Gagnan to replace his valve, invented and patented the first diving regulator with Gagnan in 1943.

Adding the diving regulator to the SCUBA, Cousteau used it on the ocean surface. He no longer needed the heavy helmets, air cylinders, and wetsuits that had made diving so difficult in the past, strapped to the ship and overly restrictive, and said:

“From today, we will travel to countries that are miles away that no one knows about, and we will swim freely with the fish scales on our skin.”

Initial Research

After the war ended, Cousteau began underwater research for the French Navy, and in 1947 he set a new depth record by descending to a depth of 300 feet.

Cousteau, who received scientific permission from the French Navy in 1951, started his first naval expedition.

Cousteau, Television Documentaries, Marine Science and Conservation

All in Calypso

Cousteau spoke to British philanthropist Thomas Loel Guinness about his desire to make submarine documentaries. Guinness, quite enthusiastically, decided that a ship would be the best help for Cousteau, and in 1950 he bought an old car ferry called the Calypso and presented it to Cousteau for one franc a year.

Having a nearly free ship, Cousteau had to supplement his ship's crew and navy. He begged the government and manufacturers for free equipment and donations for this very expensive request. In order to raise more money, he and Frederic Dumas wrote a book called “The Silent World” in which they describe their adventures in SCUBA diving. The book was instantly popular and continued to sell rapidly. It is known that more than five million copies have been sold to date.

In the book, Cousteau also published his first theory of the way whale family members navigate by echolocation, following their behavior as they enter the Strait of Gibraltar.

Changing the World & Two Movie Oscars

Cousteau, who published the first color documentary of his previous book "The Silent World" in 1956, radically changed the way people think about the ocean and its life. We may have seen many submarine images today, but until The Silent World was first published, very few people had been able to see a submarine image and learn about how it came to be.

In 1957, this film won Cousteau the award for Best Documentary. After the release of the movie, there was a great demand for the diving regulator and SCUBA produced by Gagnan and Cousteau, and many adventurous people received SCUBA diving training from Cousteau.

Cousteau, who retired from the French Navy with the rank of captain in 1956, received the Academy Award for Best Short Film with his documentary "The Golden Fish" on his fiftieth birthday and gave an interview to Time Magazine that year. It was also the cover of that issue. During his interview, Cousteau also mentioned that he predicted that “one day people will surgically add gills to them in order to live underwater”.

In 1961, he received the National Geographic Society Gold Medal from President John F Kennedy himself.

Conhelf Naval Bases and the Third Oscar

In 1963, Cousteau explored the possibility of establishing manned bases on the seafloor where divers could be "the ocean". The interest in exploring the seafloor with Conshelf Bases was financially supported by the French Petroleum Companies. Cousteau rejected this idea, preferring to work for conservation rather than exploration for oil.

In today's conditions, submarine studies can be done with lower risk and cost by using underwater robots.

In 1965, he received the third Oscar award for his documentary "The Sunless World", which he prepared about the establishment of the Conshelf Bases.

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau

Between 1968 and 1976, he produced his best-known work, Undersea World, a documentary that lasted eight seasons.

Undersea World was a documentary about the adventures of the Calypso crew and the species they observed at sea. The crew consisted of his sons Jean-Michel and Philippe. Cousteau has been a great inspiration to Marine Biologists and divers.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

In 1985, on his 75th birthday, Cousteau was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's top civilian award, by President Ronald Reagon. That same year, Cuban Communist Leader Fidel Castro had a dinner in Calypso, during which Cousteau persuaded President Castro to release 80 people imprisoned for political crimes.

Personal Details and End

Cousteau married Simone Melchior on July 12, 1937, at the age of 26, and two sons, Jean-Michel and Philippe, were born from this marriage.

He traveled constantly in Calypso with his wife, Simone Cousteau. Simone, who worked with her husband to keep the ship at sea, once sold her jewelry to buy fuel for the ship. Cousteau married Francine Triplet in 1991, a year after Simone died of cancer in 1990. While Simone was still alive, they had a daughter named Diane and a son named Pierre-Yves.

Late in his life, his son Jean-Michel's desire to use the surname Cousteau for a commercial purpose sparked a legal battle between father and son.

Cousteau, who died at the age of 87 as a result of a heart attack in Paris on June 25, 1997, was buried in the family cemetery in the village where he was born. His village changed the name of the street leading to the house where he was born to "Rue du Commandant Cousteau", that is, "Commander Cousteau Street".

David Bellamy, Botanist, Naturalist, and Publisher, said of Cousteau: "He opened the world's eyes to the wonders and problems of Earth's own inner space and challenged all divers to join him in this campaign."